Alaska Airlines becomes the first BAN animal to emotionally support animals and will only allow service dogs

In two weeks, no belly pigs, miniature horses or peacocks will be welcome aboard Alaska Airlines flights amid industry-wide crackdown on emotional support animals.

The Seattle-based airline on Tuesday announced changes to its service animal policy, stating that as of Jan. 11, the airline will no longer allow emotional support animals on its flights.

“Alaska will only transport service dogs, which are specially trained to perform tasks for the benefit of a qualified person with a disability,” the airline said in a press release.

The move comes just weeks after the U.S. Department of Transportation said it would no longer require airlines to make the same adjustments for emotionally supportive animals as for service dogs.

“This policy change is welcome news as it will help us reduce inconvenience on board, while continuing to accommodate our guests traveling with qualified service animals,” said Ray Prentice, Alaska Airlines ’director of customer advocacy.

Under the revised policy, Alaska will not accept more than two service dogs per guest in the cabin. Passengers will need to fill out a form on the airline’s website, confirming that their pet is a legitimate service dog, that they are specially trained and vaccinated and that they will behave properly during the flight.

Passengers booking their flights before January 11th will be able to travel with their emotional support animals until February 28th, but no later.

The new DOT rule, announced on Dec. 2, was limited to emotionally supportive animals and aims to resolve years of tension between airlines and passengers who bring their pets on board for free by saying that they need to help them emotionally. According to a long-standing departmental policy, all the passengers they needed were a note from a health professional.

Airlines argued that passengers mistreated the situation by bringing on board a menagerie of animals that included cats, turtles, tummy pigs, kangaroos, pandas and, in one case, a peacock named Dexter.

The agency said it was rewriting the rules in part because passengers carrying unusual animals on board “eroded public confidence in legitimate service animals.”

He also cited the increasing frequency of people “fraudulently representing their pets as service animals” and an increase in the misbehavior of emotionally supportive animals, ranging from peeing on the carpet to biting other passengers and flight crews.

The revised policy will require passengers with support animals to check them into the cargo hold (and pay a pet fee) or leave them at home. The agency estimated that airlines, which have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic, will earn up to $ 59.6 million a year in pet fees.

The number of animals on airplanes took off a few years ago and a home industry grew by providing papers, doctor’s notes and even dog vests for support animals.

Under the final DOT rule, which goes into effect in early January, a service animal is a dog trained to help a person with a physical or psychiatric disability. Advocates for veterans and others had pushed for the inclusion of psychiatric service dogs.

Airlines for America, a trade group for the largest airlines in the United States, said the new rule will protect airline passengers and employees while helping people travel with trained service dogs.

“Hopefully the days of Noah’s Ark will come to an end,” Sara Nelson, president of the Flight Assistants Association, told USA Today.

Advocates of emotionally supportive animals have been in arms over the new DOT standard, arguing that animals help them with anxiety, post-traumatic or other issues that prevent them from traveling.

“While it’s no secret that we’re still a long way from a truly accessible transportation system in this country, the DOT standard will only serve to exacerbate existing inequalities for people with disabilities who participate in air travel and instead they will be tailored almost exclusively to the airline’s interests, ”Curt Decker, executive director of the National Disability Rights Network, said in a statement, The New York Times reported.

It defines a service animal as a dog that is individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of a person with a disability;